TRIZ is the acronym for "Theory of Inventive Problem Solving." This blog is an experiment in informal TRIZ discussions, about real situations and real problems using TRIZ. Ellen Domb is the founding editor of the TRIZ Journal, http://www.triz-journal.com, and a consultant and instructor in TRIZ, http://www.trizpqrgroup.com, and author of the e-learning system http://bit.ly/b8rcVb.

Saturday, July 28, 2007

Recommending Systematic Innovation Newsletter

I continue to experiment with the concept of blogging--this column has been "dormant" for about 2 months, while I made short contributions to both the Commentary and Discussion Forum sections of www.realinnovation.com(which is also the portal for www.triz-journal.com) There were no protests from readers, so either there are no readers (part of the experiment) or you have other things keeping you busy.

If you need good reading, I strongly recommend Darrell Mann's Systematic Innovation Newsletter (available through www.systematic-innovation.com) An anachronism in the world of blogs, this is a monthly paid newsletter, with Darrell's personal views on many things. Typical issues have a patent of the month, usually with commentary on how Darrell's version of the patterns of evolution and/or Matrix 2003 predict the methodology of the patent, an investment of the month, a biomimetic idea, and sometimes a book review, a thought piece on applying research from other fields to innovation, etc. Two of his book reviews this year (Ray Kurzweil's The Singularity is Near and Phil Rosenzweig's The Halo Effect) got me to buy books, read both more than once, and give some major time to thinking about the issues! The current issue of the newsletter has a long piece on Spiral Dynamics and the observation that people who understand it "get" TRIZ faster than others. No comments until I go review SD.